DiveBlogging

Snorkling Sihanoukville, Cambodia

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:34:16 +0000

Middle of October turned out not to be right for diving, but that didn’t stop my wife and I from getting out into the nice water around Sihanoukville, so we decided to take a full day snorkelling with the beautiful motoryacht Sun. The Sun is a really nice and beautiful motoryacht build, owned and operated by Robert Duczek, who really gives the trip that “German touch” – clean, reliable, practical and after hour (the trip back to Sihanoukville) with drinks, BEERS, German Schlager music and all other “good stuff” from the 70’-90’ies German music scene..
To be honest it was a real pleasure to spend a day at The Sun and we did in fact do it 2 days…

The trip took us to a good snorkeling site at the island Koh Kong Kang and to the bigger island Koh Rung Samloem which was better for some swimming and a walk on the island (do take care of the sandflies!).

At Koh Kong Kang we had a 1 hour stop which was perfect for some snorkeling – I’ve included a couple of pictures taken with my new camera Canon IXUS 110IS and the Waterproof Case WP-DC32.

Lots of fishes around Koh Kong Kang

Corals outside Koh Kong Kang

Koh Kong Kang also has nudibraches

More about the snorkeling trips and The Sun in the next posts….

Sea Turtle at Gordon Reef Tiran

NK — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:49:09 +0000

I can highly recommend always to include the Straits of Tiran in a divetrip to Sharm el Sheikh. The Straits of Tiran is full of corals, fishes and turtles – and at the right time whale sharks, sharks and manta rays.

At a trip to Gordon Reef at the Straits of Tiran I came close to a beautiful sea turtle and it wasn’t really shy – I’ve included a couple of pictures of it here…

Sea turtle at Gorden Reef, Straits of Tiran

Another image of the beautiful Sea Turtle

Now diving with Canon IXUS 110IS and Waterproof Case WP-DC32

NK — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:36:39 +0000

Before the wedding in end September and the Honeymoon/divetrip to Cambodia I thought it was about time to upgrade my photo equipment a bit. Since 2003 I have been ok with my Sony DSC and waterproof case, but I must admit it was rather slow and getting too old, but all the fuss about also needing to get a new waterproof case had made me wait… now was the time.
I still prefer a small compact camera because I like to be able to carry it with me in a pocket – I’m not a pro with a huge camera and I do know I will never bring a huge camera with me around… so my choice was to switch to Canon and the newest compact at that time – the Canon IXUS 110IS and the Waterproof Case WP-DC32.

One of the first underwater photo’s I took with the new equipment was this rather big Sea Star / Starfish I found in the water outside the island Koh Rung Samloem, Cambodia –more about that trip later…

No diving in Sihanoukville, Cambodia

NK — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:11:16 +0000

Yeah, unfortunately my trip to Cambodia and Sihanoukville didn’t bring me any new diving experiences. Not because I didn’t want to dive, not because I didn’t have the time to dive (we we’re there for 10 days) and not because Sihanoukville didn’t have some good and experienced dive centers, but just because we were in Sihanoukville a bit to early in the local dive season.

I was already warned before we left – I had already seen that the dive centers in Sihanoukville was telling that the dive season started around beginning November, but I had hoped for some dives in mid/end October when I arrived – that was not possible for several reasons.
First of all the dive centers in Sihanoukville decided to use the off-season for repairing their nice boats and used the rests for 2-3 days trips and secondly a tough storm (just before we arrived) made the visibility on the nearby dive sites a bit of a gamble… what I really liked here was that ALL dive centers in Sihanoukville were so nice and honest to tell us that they either wouldn’t take us diving at all or that they would recommend waiting a week more… or so…
So no diving… seems like the diving in Sihanoukville start from November!

But but… being on a honeymoon we decided to take a trip with a really nice boat, which also included some nice snorkeling – more about that later.

Off for Thailand and diving in Cambodia

NK — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:35:51 +0000

Leaving today for Thailand and then some diving around Sihanoukville Cambodia – of course the time in Cambodia also means Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh, but we have “allocated” something like 8-10 days for Sihanoukville if the weather and diving is nice….

More to come later!

Snorkeling at Koh Chang

NK — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:26:26 +0000

Koh Chang isn’t really famous for diving or snorkeling and it is certainly possible to find better place in Thailand for that, but but Koh Chang is just such a charming island without too much of the fuss and noise you’ll find at the bigger tourist destinations in Thailand – not said that Koh Chang doesn’t have closed resorts (to make sure the turist doesn’t get to close to the Thais… ), a couple of girlybars and a couple of clubs, but it’s really nothing like Phuket, Koh Samui or Pattaya – not at all.

But Koh Chang does offer diving and it’s in fact nice – not too crowded..
When I was at Koh Chang with my Girlfriend back in March 2008 we started out with a bit of snorkeling around an island just off the west coast of Koh Chang – I think it was Ko Su Wan or Ko Rom, just a 20 minutes trip with the speedboat…

There we’re lot of fishes and life on our small snorkeling-trip

A Parrotfish eating

Hard and soft Corals

Lot’s of fishes around soft Coral and a Barrel Coral

As you can see Koh Chang is in fact a nice place to snorkel and combined with Koh Chang being so charming I can only recommend going there…

Diving Cambodia means Sihanoukville

NK — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:43:02 +0000

I have now been doing a bit of reseach on diving Cambodia and I have “only” found diving operations in the beautiful beach city Sihanoukville – all diving in Cambodia seems to start at Sihanoukville.

In Sihanoukville there are 4 diving centers:

Scuba Nation Diving Center
At Serendipity Beach
Scuba Nation offers PADI Open Water Courses at US 455 and boat trip with 2 fun dives at US 85.

The Dive Shop Cambodia
At Serendipity Beach Road
The Dive Shop Cambodia offers PADI Open Water Courses at US 330, but I can’t find their prices for fun dives at the website..

EcoSea Dive Center
At Occhuteal Beach or downtown + several other places.
EcoSea Dive Center is one of the cheapest dive centers in Sihanoukville with PADI Open Water Courses at US 295 and boat trip with 2 fun dives at US 65.

Diving And More
In Downtown
Diving and More is offering PADI Open Water Courses at US 245 and 2 fun dives at US 70.

That was the rough details, but as I find diving also being a social sport my choice of who to dive with depends mostly on where I like the persons the most… I mean you have to spend both time on the boat and in the water, so better find some cool people to join.

I really looking forward to check out the diving around Sihanoukville sometimes around end of October – not really sure when exactly we’ll arrive. First we’ll spend a couple of days around Angkor Wat – it should be so beautiful! And on our way down to Sihanoukville we’ll of course take a couple of days in the capital Phnom Penh.

Diving Cambodia in October

NK — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:35:43 +0000

Heading for Cambodia in October and I’m sure there’s going to be some diving included in the trip, as always…

Cambodia is not know for being a big diving country and the diving should be pretty underdeveloped, which in fact could be interesting – I’m sure there will be no queuing at the dive sites.

The diving in Cambodia should mainly from Sihanoukville – if you hear about any other dive hubs do tell me please – and there seems to be only a few dive operators there. I will be back with more information when I start my research on Cambodia diving…

The dive sites are around 1,5 – 2 hours outside Sihanoukville and has names like Koh Rong, Condor Reef, Koh Tang, Koh Mano, Koh Prins and more…
Gonna be interesting to dive the best of them!

Sharks of the World on iPhone

NK — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:07:53 +0000

The original “Sharks of the World Field Guide” by Save Our Seas Foundation is now ready for the iPhone as a free application.
All 440 species of sharks are in there, so it should soon be a must bring for diving trips… maybe not in Denmark..

The Sharks of the World Field Guide can be found in the App Store, search for “Sharks Guide” which is also the name of it in App Store.

Now with Emergency First Response and Rescue Diver!

NK — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:13:43 +0000

Last week was really busy.

First the Emergency First Response (EFR) course Thursday and then Rescue Diver theory for 5 hours Friday evening.
Before that I had the joy of reading the Rescue Diver book – a really interesting book full of good examples.
The theory exam wasn’t that difficult, probably because our instructor Michael Jensen was really great and I did spend a lot of time reading the book (full day)…

Saturday and Sunday was booked for in-water exercises in the nice cold Danish water. I guess picking a weekend in the end of June was a good choice by me, because it was full sun and 26C, so I did in fact manage to sunburned in the forehead and on the nose (no shock) and with a 7mm wetsuit the was was nice… but ALSO because there was a lot to do in the exercises – in was far from the usually concept of lazy diving to not spend too much air…
The exercises was great fun, but also somewhat hard (at least) and I’m looking forward to do some extra practicing in some of the areas – I guess this Rescue Diver is just like getting a drivers license – then you’re ready to learn, but the big difference is that you dont really hope to get the posibility to try your Rescue Diver skills (that would mean that somebody is in serious problems..).
Anyway I’m very happy that I did take the Rescue Diver course and I do feel good about getting to know about this – it might come in handy one day..

And in the end of the last day we did a bit of fundiving on a small wreck called U3…